This section is intended to provide a background or context to the invention disclosed below. The description herein may include concepts that could be pursued, but are not necessarily ones that have been previously conceived, implemented or described. Therefore, unless otherwise explicitly indicated herein, what is described in this section is not prior art to the description in this application and is not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
The following abbreviations that may be found in the specification and/or the drawing figures are defined as follows:
3GThird Generation3GPPThird Generation Partnership ProjectDLDownLink (from base station to user equipment)DPIDeep Packet InspectioneNB or eNode Bevolved Node B (e.g., LTE base station)EPCEvolved Packet CoreGPRSGeneral Packet Radio Servicehttphypertext transport protocolLTELong Term EvolutionMACMessage Authenticate CodeMCOMobile Content OptimizerNode BUTRAN base stationPGWPacket GatewayQoEQuality of ExperienceQoSQuality of ServiceRFRadio FrequencyRNCRadio Network ControllerRxReceiver or receptionSGSNServing GPRS Support NodeSSLSecure Sockets LayerTxTransmitter or transmissionUEUser EquipmentULUpLinkURIUniform Resource IdentifierURLUniform Resource LocatorUTRANUniversal Terrestrial Radio Access Network
With the increasing popularity of smart phones, tablets, and other portable wireless devices, mobile data traffic continues and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 92 percent from 2010 to 2015, reaching 6.3 exabytes per month by 2015, and two-thirds of the world's mobile data traffic is expected to be video by 2015. This has brought many challenges to operator networks. For instance, one survey showed that 74 percent of mobile users hold operators most responsible for the user's video stalling, buffering or taking too long to start when streaming over the operator's mobile network, and has found that slow browsing speed would cause 43 percent of respondents to consider switching operators, while another 24 percent said that buffering and poor video quality would cause them to consider switching. Further, 47 percent of mobile users said they are frustrated when video takes too long to play and 45 percent are most discouraged by non-continuous, interrupted play.
A goal of media optimization, particularly video optimization, is to improve efficiency without compromising on the quality of experience (QoE) of the users. Mobile video content optimization has been used as an effective tool for operators to reduce excessive mobile data entering mobile networks without sacrificing user experience. A study indicated that only two percent of the http transactions are video transactions, yet these transactions are responsible for 60 percent of network bandwidth utilization. As a majority of mobile data traffic is http-based video, the mobile optimization is targeting at mobile video type of applications. Operators have been deploying mobile content optimizer (MCO) in their networks and this optimization is not visible to end-users. The goal of these optimizers is to work in favor of an operator, improve the network utilization, and increase the number of user traffic sessions at any given time. There are a number of popular companies that are being tested in operator network. Even though all of these products have similar design goals, they have subtle differences in their architecture and hence their solutions.
While these products are useful, improvements could still be made to improve content optimization.